JUST BEFORE WINTER. 1^5 



shows its presence by the extraordinary and unusual 

 coarseness of manner. The true English rustic is always 

 civil, however rough, and will not offend you with any- 

 thing unspeakable, so that at first it is quite bewildering 

 to meet with such behaviour in the midst of green lanes. 

 This is the explanation — the gipsy taint. Instead of 

 the growing population obliterating the gipsy, the gipsy 

 has saturated the English folk. 



When people saw the red man driven from the 

 prairies and backwoods of America, and whole states as 

 large as Germany without a single Indian left, much was 

 written on the extermination of the aborigines by the 

 stronger Saxon. As the generations lengthen, the facts 

 appear to wear another aspect. From the intermarriage 

 of the lower orders with the Indian squaws the Indian 

 blood has got into the Saxon veins, and now the cry 

 is that the red man is exterminating the Saxon, so 

 greatly has he leavened the population. The typical 

 Yankee face, as drawn in Punchy is indeed the red Indian 

 profile with a white skin and a chimney-pot hat. Upon 

 a small scale the same thing has happened in this 

 village by the forest ; the gipsy half-breed has stained 

 the native blood. Perhaps races like the Jew and gipsy, 

 so often quoted as instances of the permanency of type, 

 really owe that apparent fixidity to their power of 

 mingling with other nations. They are kept alive as 

 races by mixing ; otherwise one of two things would 

 happen — the Jew and the gipsy must have died out, 

 or else have supplanted all the races of the globe. 

 Had the Jews been so fixed a type, by this time their 

 offspring would have been more numerous than the 

 Chinese. The reverse, however, is the case ; and there- 

 fore we may suppose they must have become extinct, 

 had it not been for fresh supplies of Saxon, Teuton, 



